04
Dec
A dean, a sociologist and an economist read Goodnight Moon for The Harvard Crimson’s Fifteen Minutes magazine. (This year they have Steven Pinker doing If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.)
20
Oct
Paris
22
Sep
Can a Diplomat Really Get Away With Murder?
This week’s Back Story, by Daniel Stone.
via pablog12
Sep
To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasant sensations in the world. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it. For this reason your customary thoughts, all except the rarest of your friends, even most of your luggage—everything, in fact, which belongs to your everyday life, is merely a hindrance. The tourist travels in his own atmosphere like a snail in his shell and stands, as it were, on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents of the world. But if you discard all this, and sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind, there is no knowing may not happen to you.
Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches, 1932
09
Sep
Ladakh, a region in India bordering Tibet, takes more culinary cues from its northern neighbor than from the Indian legacy of curry leaves and cumin. Butter tea, churned till fat and tannic liquid are inseparable, warms each Himalayan morning. Young monks eat a balanced diet of noodles and dumplings. As in the rest of India, however, ketchup remains the condiment of choice.
08
Sep
Hipsters in Phyang, a village in Jammu & Kashmir, India
07
Sep
We had already tamed our own hostile landscapes, the enormous stretches of the West, stamped out what came before, emptied and erased a vast run of earth so that we, the Americans, could have a tabula rasa, could invent a new nation and grow strong. And then September 11 came and infected us with the idea that we could tame all the wilderness of the world, too, and make ourselves perfectly safe.
Los Angeles Times reporter Megan K. Stack in Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War, the best book I’ve read about the Mideast since Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War, and more lyrical than that. (Think Joan Didion, with cluster bombs.)
06
Sep
The New York Times recently featured the Golden Temple, the Sikh site near the Pakistan border that attracts visitors of all faiths for its gorgeous architecture and free daily meals. I was just there in June, and could have stayed forever, sung into stillness by the musicians in the temple’s inner sanctum who throatily declare their love of God to every visitor.
05
Sep
Airplane fare in India: mango custard, lentil salad, a curry potato sandwich and a water bottle from the company that owns the vanity airline.
19
Jun
I wanted to be roaming the world, I wanted to be telling stories, I wanted to be taking risks, and I wanted to be having fun — and doing it all on someone else’s dime.
Christiane Amanpour on starting at CNN. 2010 Harvard Class Day speech.
